Securing a Beachhead

I would look for a city state to liberate on the other continent and liberate it with frigates and privateers. Privateers are not only good to strike the final blow, they can also be used to add ships to your navy. The liberated city state becomes a safe haven to heal your ships and land ground forces, while it does not burden your empire.

Threads like this make me love my choice of playing mostly England. With them it's as simple as making 4-5 Ship of the Line, 1-2 Privateers and conquering cities 1 after another in whatever direction you choose, often in 1-2 turns even on capitals. Normally I've got 2-3 fleets like this, and then just build up my cities and a defense fleet.

As for both england and non-england people: Build Barracks and Armory. Having an extra 30 exp. means level 3 (and range promotion.) is only 15 attacks or hits taken away. With range you can take anything safely until steam-power, but you should be so far ahead by then you can meet it with your own fleet of ironclads.

dpaq said:

First off - greetings, salutations, and thanks go out to this community of Civ players.

I've recently stepped up to Immortal and typically play fractal or continents. With Domination I often find myself struggling with the late-game / 2nd continent conquest. Science moves so fast at this stage, so if I launch an invasion fleet with rifleman/cavalry with artillery (pre-destroyers) it can be difficult to secure a beachhead, from which I upgrade my units and then roll on.

I've found that using gold to secure a CS ally and then invading through its territory is the path of least resistance, but I'm curious...

How do you invade the 2nd continent? What is most efficient, fun?

As I get better I expect I will have a suitable navy to accompany my land units, but I'm not at that stage yet. I still have to land my units before the onslaught.

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Riflemen are pretty meh. Try battleships, infantry, artillery, machine guns, and a few bombers.

I've gone island-hopping with the Zulu before on small continents AND conquered a civ that had a tech lead and far better units. I invaded and subsequently brought down 3 civs that had continents to themselves and strong resistance. Amphibious invasions are a lot easier than they are drummed up to be.

Someone talked about disbanding your early army. This can be a bad idea. I do not disband all of my land army, keeping my experienced siege and melee as their experience usually makes them last longer on a beachhead. You, I assume want to play immortal/Deity from your comments so I wouldn't count on having a big tech lead where your units being green can be overcome by tech difference.

My general strategy:

• After my continent is toast, sit tight, develop, and secure my tech to be on par with the AI. Befriend as many CS on your continent as possible to alleviate happiness problems, otherwise other AI will befriend them and they will invade you upon DOWing the other continent. You want to be able to leave your continent with minimal troops, maybe just 1 per city and keep the AI on the defensive.
• It will really help you to pick 1 or 2 crappy CS to DOW and keep the war going for years. Grind your troops on them for xp and work on getting your archers and siege to really high levels. Eventually, you will get an elite group of archers and melee that have cover promotions, logistics, range, etc. This is key for having a strong beachhead army. I would produce some galleases to blast at the city too and get them up to the point of +1 range. It comes quickly. The CS will be a nice source of periodic workers to steal too. Now you're golden.
• Stockpile gold for the upgrades to come
• If you can manage, pay warlike AI on the other continent to put the place to war. Maybe even have some allies upon landing with this strat
• Wait for a military tech breakaway point like the discovery of navigation simultaneously corresponding with cavalry, cannons, lancers, Gatlings, and riflemen. This allows you to upgrade your experienced horse, siege, galleases, and melee to great new forms and they keep their massive experience. It might be desirable to skip upgrading to gatlings until after you secure your beachhead as often +1 range XB's can take a beachhead in no time. Just land in a no man's land and find some hill 3 hexes out from your desired city. Then converge on it. Your +1 range frigates and XB's will wittle the city down in just a couple turns and then your landed melee or a boat can take it. Now you have an easy beachhead.
• Use this time to upgrade anything new. Gatlings might be a good choice as having +1 range and logistics gatlings placed on hills near your beachhead will mow down the AI troop response in no time. You'll be untakeable.
• If you land through a CS, as has been mentioned, also a great option, note that you can send some workers over ahead of time and build forts in preparation, just ally the CS in question early and keep some troops over their in the forts so they don't remove them in key points within the CS border. You can use these as a launching point and a fallback point if resistance breaks your first wave. Forts are awesome and will protect you well while reinforcements can be sent.
• Alternatively, Send your +1 range frigates and pick a coastal city while having your land army nearby but not vulnerable in the water. I like to have a fleet of 5 or so with heavy land-bombarding upgrades and range plus at least one melee boat with city-taking upgrades and one with heavy naval combat upgrades, preferably both privateers so you can capture the opponent's navy and make it your own.
• Bombard out of range and destroy all responding boats easily by focus-fire and sniping with the privateers. Eventually the city, no matter how strong, is whittled down and can't fire back. Then zoom in with the melee boat and take it. Then embark, guarding your flank with the frigate fleet and using ZOC appropriately to keep boats from zooming in the snipe your army and land everyone in the new city's borders. If you lose the city before your troops land no biggie. You've lost almost nothing. Whittle it back down and capture again. You're just weakening their cities.

These strategies get beachheads quite easily. Now land your highly decorated land troops and begin the carnage anew on a new continent. Artillery will come quite soon as well. I also utilize my growing fleet to terrorize other coastal cities and bombard any reinforcements I see to death. The privateers will keep adding to your fleet for free and soon you will have an unstoppable navy to support your land troops. Enjoy!

No need to even wait for bombers and modern troops. You can finish the world far before that unless it is huge or something. But if for some reason you aren't finished by these ages, upgrading your fleet and land troops to even better forms is no joke. Battleships and destroyers with the piracy upgrade are quite fearsome for forming further beachheads and your army of infantry with 9 upgrades apiece: cover, march, and blitz will be quite hard to even bomb to death. Build some AA or fighters, make a few planes, carriers, and a bunch of subs and continue the carnage with even more ease. The AI is incompetent at modern warfare.

Do you have workers you dont mind parting with? Send them in with your invasion force. The AI loves to bombard embarked workers. You could probably pull the same trick with embarked scouts. Cannon fodder while your military on land live on.

Utilizing a friendly or allied CS is an effective approach. If geography allows, I'll usually use 4-7 Frigates/Battleships to bring down the city's defenses and use an Ironclad or Destroyer to capture the city, as well as a military unit by sea or land. Just depends on the variables.